Residential homeowners often wish to remotely control electrical components in their homes. A homeowner may, for example, wish to control the electrical components from a control device at a single, central location. Using one prior art system, the homeowner can press one sequence of buttons on the control device to turn on one remote light, or he can press a second sequence of buttons on the control device to turn on another remote light. Using this system, the control device first learns or is programmed with a unique address for each remote light. The system is then able to individually address each remote light to thereby control it, such as by sending it a command to turn on or off. The system can also be used to commission multiple lights into a set so that each light in the set is identified by the same set address. In this way, all the lights in the set can be addressed and thereby controlled by transmitting a single command to the set. This latter address is generally referred to as a multicast address.
This and other prior art systems have several drawbacks. First, when commissioning lights or other electronic devices into a set, the control device must learn or be programmed to contain the unique address of an individual light or other electronic device. Second, these systems do not scale well. When individually controlling multiple devices in a room, the control device must send commands to each device, a time-consuming process. Third, these systems are difficult to maintain. When a device is replaced, all control devices used to control it must learn the address of the replacement device. For these reasons, it is also difficult to automate or customize a system to control these devices.